


another day is sharp (picking up the pieces)

by queenbaskerville



Series: sparks (filled with hope) [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Izuku is the Avatar, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, War, iida is depressed and traumatized, ochaco is also an airbender, rei is also depressed and traumatized, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 10:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: "We weren't always like this," Iida says."What happened?" Izuku asks."The Fire Nation Happened," Iida says.--Iida finds Izuku and Ochaco frozen in ice in the South Pole. Then the three of them find everyone else.
Relationships: Iida Tenya & Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochako, Todoroki Enji | Endeavor/Todoroki Rei
Series: sparks (filled with hope) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550287
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	another day is sharp (picking up the pieces)

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by lyrics of ["diving woman" by japanese breakfast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkaZ223rjAI). 
> 
> probably obvious because of todoroki enji and rei, but here, just in case: content warning for offscreen implied rape. enough times to have The Kids, basically.

"We weren't always like this," Iida says. 

"Like what?" Izuku asks.

Iida gestures to the igloos, the ice huts, their one wall of defense, their one watchtower. The isolated little town, if it could be called a town. Children, the elderly, the disabled, and teenage Tenya Iida himself, left to guard everything. 

"It's still lovely," Ochaco says. Her voice is as light and airy as her element, and it's as hesitant as a breeze tripping over a hill, wondering if a storm is following it. "We're happy to be here. You welcomed us here when you didn't have to."

"That's not what I mean," Iida says. "We sprawled across this place. We weren't starving every winter."

Izuku's hands twitch. He tries not to let this new guilt creep over him again, this brand new fear, this dawning horror that was first born when Iida told him and Ochaco that no one had seen airbenders like the two of them in one hundred years. A guilt born when Iida described, in brief sentences, without looking at him, the war the Fire Nation waged against the rest of the world in the Avatar's absence. Iida hadn't gone into much detail, since he'd suddenly become preoccupied with Izuku's and Ochaco's excitement about penguin-sledding, but the few hints had been enough to make Izuku question his decision to run away from the Air Temple with Ochaco yesterday.

Or a hundred years ago, if Iida is to be believed.

"What happened?" Izuku asks.

"The Fire Nation happened," Iida says.

* * *

The Fire Lord mounted three raids against the Southern Water Tribe. None could be rash, not when the Southern Water Tribe presented such a formidable force. Especially in their own habitat, among their own element. The Fire Nation would be at a disadvantage. The Fire Lord sent his only son, Prince Enji, to carry out the raids. Perhaps he didn't have to—most nobles preferred to keep their children away from the front lines, not send them there to lead the charge—but Enji was aflame with the desire to prove himself, and who did the Fire Lord trust more than his own son to melt the South Pole off the map?

So Prince Enji left the Fire Nation with a fleet of steel ships and the best firebenders at his side.

He lost all but one ship. But his surviving ship carried victory back to the Fire Nation. It left bloodied waters in its wake. 

* * *

"Princess Rei was the best waterbender the South Pole had ever seen," Iida says. "The best waterbender the _world_ had ever seen."

Iida had never seen her himself, he says. But his brother remembered her, had talked about her often when he was still around, and Iida repeats that description to the airbenders now—Rei, white haired and wild. An ice storm. A hurricane.

A chill creeps up Izuku's back. 

"She _was_ the best," Izuku echoes.

"Yeah," Iida says. His face is grim. "The Fire Nation captured her anyway."

"Captured?" Ochaco says. "Not killed?"

"No," Iida says, "though it might've been kinder."

* * *

Tenya Iida knows this:

Princess Rei of the Southern Water Tribe was forced to wed Crown Prince Enji Todoroki almost immediately after their arrival at the Fire Nation.

Here are a handful of things that Tenya Iida doesn't know:

The first time Rei tried to escape Enji's ship, she almost killed him. Almost. 

After that, they moved her to a room as close to the boiler room as physically possible without putting her directly in there. They hoped the heat would be enough to wear her out, unused to it as she was from living in the South Pole her whole life. What they didn't realize that it was impossible to sweat her out—on her skin, sweat became a weapon. She was a waterbender, after all.

She only made it as far as the upper deck before being beaten back by the sheer number of soldiers.

She didn't get to try a third time. They moved her out of the boiler room and tried a new tactic; Enji did his level best to never make the same mistake twice. Rei spent the rest of the journey back to the Fire Nation drugged up. The healer spent all the reserves he had for wounded soldiers on keeping her drugged and woozy and sleeping.

Princess Rei of the Southern Water Tribe became Princess Rei of the Fire Nation, wife of Crown Prince Enji Todoroki, on a sunny summer day, in a red dress, with her hands chained behind her back. She was born to become a chief. She looked out upon a swell of nobles who didn't belong to her, a golden crown atop her white hair, and thought, for a moment, that her rage could set a world on fire.

The first time Rei tried to escape the Fire Nation, Enji locked her in a prison cell beneath the palace without a window and only one cup of water a day. She was there for a week before he released her.

The second time she tried to escape, he broke both her legs.

There was not a third escape attempt. Rei was pregnant by then.

* * *

"We survived without her, for a time," Iida says. "We weren't helpless. But just when we were starting to recover and rebuild from the first attack, the second raid decimated us. We'd been a whole city. And then we were down to nothing. And then the third raid..."

Iida looks out into the white horizon. Blue sky meets white snow in a crisp, unbroken line.

"I was five years old," he says. "Enji didn't bother coming himself, that time. He didn't send a fleet, like the two times before. Just one ship. For one waterbender. The last one."

"You," Izuku says.

"Me," Iida says.

"Only, they didn't get you," Ochaco says. Her voice is soft. "You're still here."

"Tensei was going to give himself up for me."

Iida clenches his fists. He still won't look at Izuku or Ochaco. 

"We were the last of the Iidas, him and me. My parents and all my other siblings were waterbenders and were captured or killed during the second raid."

Iida had described this already, the second raid, as it was described to him by Tensei. Tensei fighting off a Fire Nation soldier with a sword in one hand and baby Tenya Iida in the other. Their parents and siblings dragged away by the Fire Nation, executed in the snow or locked away on the Fire Nation ships.

"He was going to give himself up, but he was delirious with fever, and at the last minute, another member of our tribe stepped forward instead," Iida says. "A woman named Nemuri. I didn't even know her."

It's this that seems to bother Iida the most. Izuku tries to imagine it, someone dying for him when he doesn't even know them, not their name or their face or their life. He can't. He can't imagine it.

"They killed her and left," Iida says. "And then, three years later, Nemuri's wife round everyone up, all the strongest men and women, and said, 'We're going to defeat the Fire Lord.' And Tensei went with them."

Iida closes his eyes.

"It was the last time I saw him," he says. "He was the last family I had."

Iida gestures to the village again.

"Me and everyone still here, we rebuilt what we could," Iida says, "but we went hungry too often. Some of us didn't make it. This is what's left."

Izuku and Ochaco say nothing.

"We weren't always like this," Iida says again, quieter this time. "I just wanted you to know."

* * *

Tenya Iida knows this:

Rei bore Enji two sons.

Here are a handful of things that Tenya Iida doesn't know:

Rei bore Enji more than just two sons—there were three sons, and a daughter.

Enji didn't explain the choice of Touya's name. He was born with a head full of red hair and eyes exactly like Enji's. Enji took the baby from her arms almost immediately, thrilled by the heat of him, and only gave him back when the midwives coaxed him into the re-realization that a baby needs its mother's milk, its mother's care.

Their daughter was born three years later with a shock of white hair and eyes like Rei's. Enji held her once and handed her back immediately. His dismissal only brought Rei relief. She named her daughter Fuyumi, kissing that soft white hair and thinking of snow, of the beautiful winters of home. 

Rei told her children stories of spirits, every spirit world story her own parents passed down. Every breathy whisper of Tui and La felt like she could pretend she was home, holding her children close to her with her parents just outside the door. If she closed her eyes she could pretend that she was only warm because it was a South Pole summer, not a Fire Nation winter.

The next child, three years after that, was born with white hair, too. Rei didn't understand the look in Enji's eyes at this. He insisted on naming the boy anyway, and he named him Natsuo, after the summer he was born in. A blessed thing for firebenders, to be born in summer. But Rei and Enji both knew that Natsuo would not be a firebender.

Rei didn't understand why Enji kept the birth of this son a secret from the public, saying the boy died in childbirth, when it was something he had not done with Fuyumi. She didn't understand why no one would let her take the boy from his room. Natsuo spent his first years of life never leaving that room. Rei never left it, either, afraid of what would become of her secret son if she left his side. Fuyumi and Touya visited once, sneaking in, unbeknownst to their father. They had wondered where their mother had gone and begged the answer out of a servant who brought food to that room. Touya, six years old—or seven, perhaps, Rei couldn't keep track of the days anymore by then—carried his little sister on his hip. 

Fuyumi was all of three or four but still stared in awe at Natsuo and said, voice quiet, "He looks like me and Mom."

Touya's face screwed up, turned pink and red, and Rei could only stare at what looked like the onset of some sort of tantrum. 

"He's ugly," Touya says. "He should look like me and Father."

Fuyumi had been reaching to touch Natsuo's soft white hair, but at Touya's angry words, she pulled away as if burned and buried her face in his shoulder. Rei continued to stare at them. Her children, but for a moment, Touya's six-year-old face looked so much like Enji's fury that she regarded her children as strangers. She shook away the feeling, unsettled, and kissed the top of both of their heads before ushering them out the way they came. It would do them no good for anyone to catch them there.

Natsuo's first four years of life were also his last. What happened to him, even Rei didn't know, not fully, not truly, not really. How could anyone know, when the nation was swept up in the chaos of the sudden death of the Fire Lord, and Prince Enji's crowning as New Fire Lord? And then Shouto was born. A prince with half his hair red and half his hair white. Enji's celebration, the nation's celebration, was greater than even for Touya's birth—Touya, who was now the crown prince.

Rei, who was now Fire Lady. Rei, who held a baby in her arms, too numb with pain and grief to do anything but blink down at her squealing son. Half red, like his father. Half white, like her—or, she thought, numbness suddenly sparking up with horror, like Natsuo.

* * *

"Black snow?" Ochaco says.

Iida spins around, his eyes wide. He stares at the black puff that flutters down into Ochaco's waiting hand.

"That doesn't seem right," Izuku says. He reaches up his own hand to catch one, and when he gazes into the sky, he sees a cloud of them drifting down. 

"Ash," says Iida, and when he speaks his voice shakes. "Fire Nation."

And, somewhere close, but not close enough that any of them can see, Shouto Todoroki stands atop the deck of a metal ship and sees, with his own eyes, for the first time, his mother's homeland.

Shouto tries to feel nothing. He manages to lock every feeling away, bury it all somewhere cold inside him. And that's close enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's some cool fanart that gets me motivated to write
> 
> [ atla/bnha crossover](https://instagram.com/p/Bj5yZ0kF2Uw/)   
>  [shouto as zuko (and vice versa)](https://minkidoodles.tumblr.com/post/181852254418/i-feel-like-the-reason-for-this-is)

**Author's Note:**

> so uh that was a mess of a concept, but i had fun writing it at least
> 
> probably going to follow up with some Sad Todoroki Content, so stay tuned, i guess?


End file.
